


Too Much and Just Enough

by monimala



Category: All My Children
Genre: F/M, Gap Filler, Implied/Referenced Cheating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-02
Updated: 2013-09-02
Packaged: 2017-12-25 10:34:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/952057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/monimala/pseuds/monimala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>This takes place after the Hulu season finale in September 2013. Some things are just inevitable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Too Much and Just Enough

He’s thought about it. Of _course_ he’s thought about it. Long before Jesse stumbled into the Chandler Media gala, waving booze-soaked accusations around like a weapon. He’d be a fool not to. Angela Hubbard is beautiful. Strong. Smart. The complete package of class and grace and mercy. And he’s held that precious package in his arms a dozen times in his dreams. Not as chaste and comforting as a hug, or as teasing as a dance for charity. He’s seduced her, made love to her, fucked her six ways to Sunday. The kind of fantasies that yank him upright in a tangle of sheets, gasping and hard and wondering how he ever thought anybody else could heal the gaping wound inside him.

But David isn’t delusional. No, if anything he’s painfully self-aware of his shortcomings, of the kind of man he is. There is no planet on which he’s worthy of her. Even if he takes immense joy in pointing out Jesse’s deficiencies as a husband, as a man, there is no question that he’s not fit for Angie either. 

He’s honest to a fault. And that means being honest about his dishonesty. David is a villain. As much of a scourge on Pine Valley as he is a boon. For all the lives he’s saved, he’s wrecked more. He knows that. And the last thing he should want is to wreck Angela, too.

But he’s thought about it. _Of course_ he’s thought about it. 

**

Sometimes she wonders if she ever truly got her sight back. Because everyone treats her as though she’s still blind. Jesse lies to her face. Her children shield her from their pain. Joe and Dixie handle her with kid gloves. Even David…Lord love the sinner and hate all his sins…gentles his voice and his hands for her. He touches her like she’s fragile, too clean and too pure. Sacred.

When did she become a saint instead of a woman? Angie doesn’t know. But she’s tired of it. She is just as mortal as the rest of them, just as fallible. And what she doesn’t _see_ , she certainly still _feels_.

She’s angry. _So_ angry. At Jesse, at the animals who terrorized Cassandra. At God. At herself for being so helpless, so weak.

And she’s frightened. That her marriage is a lie. That her career is a temporary shelter from an unyielding storm. That she is not true enough, not good enough, to weather any of it.

And dear Lord, but she is lustful. Deep in her heart. She wants more than Jesse’s patronizing embrace and tight smiles. She wants more than to be held like she might shatter at any moment. She wants to be… _wanted_. Essential. Like water or air. She can’t remember the last time she and her husband shook the bed with their love and their need.

She _does_ remember the last time she wanted something for herself. It surprised her. Because she, too, has bought the fiction of her sainthood. But she was over the shock quickly. Laughing for the first time in she didn’t know how long. Leaning into David’s warmth and his light and feeling young instead of so terribly old and tired. _I could have this man_. It flashed though her mind, that traitorous thought. Selfish and wicked and…human.

He apologized afterward. For what he said to Jesse, but, she knows, also for that moment. For holding her too close. For smiling too much. For being _inappropriate_ with the perfect paragon that is Angela Baxter Hubbard. As if a man who’s saved her child, saved her vision, saved her _soul_ , could ever be such a thing.

Sometimes she wonders if she ever truly got her sight back. Because even the Devil incarnate won’t let her look her fill. 

**

It takes a long time. Hours. Weeks. Months. A dozen more lies from people they love. A handful more hurts in need of tending. Two steps forward and three steps back.

They don’t fall into an affair so much as drift. Like two unmoored boats in a private harbor. It happens on an ordinary day. Coffee is shared. Muffins broken apart and devoured. Crumbs brushed away. They’re walking, and then they aren’t. Talking, and then they aren’t. The door to his suite shuts behind them, and she kisses him because he’ll never kiss her. She places his hands square on her hips and pulls him close. And he leans in and murmurs, “Thank God. Thank _God_ , Angela.”

“For what?” She chuckles into his lips, usually so sure and arrogant, but charmingly tentative in this.

“For you.” And then he backs her up, flush against the wall, and kisses her like a man who’s gone without so long that he’s starving. Thirsting. Desperate to be sated. Nourished. _Complete_.

She seeks the same fullness, and urges it from his tongue and his palms and his fingertips. “Oh, David, David…” She encourages him to grip harder, to kiss deeper, to make it count. To make it _matter_.

It takes a long time. Hours. Weeks. Months. And then only seconds. Breaths. Syllables.

“I want you,” she whispers along the line of his jaw. “I want you so much.”

“I love you,” he confesses, licking heat down the column of her throat. “I’ve loved you for so long.”

Clothing rustles, bodies adjust and give and take…and they don’t fall into each other so much as drift.

 

 

\--end--

 

September 2, 2013  


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